The Internet has made access to content anywhere in the world only a click away and new technologies, known as Web 2.0 technologies, have changed how content is created. Instead of being created by a restricted number of people and then edited and highlighted when deemed important by an editorial staff, control over content is now often placed in the hands of the community of people actually using the content.
Digg, Facebook and Myspace are all examples of web sites providing access to community-controlled content. Digg is generally focused on extending content that one would find in a newspaper or magazine, while Myspace and Facebook are more about providing a place for community members to share information amongst other people with whom they wish to interact.
Another widely used example of community-controlled content is Wikipedia, which provides an online dictionary by leveraging what is commonly referred to as Wiki technologies. Wiki technologies not only enable users to create their own content like Digg and the other community web sites previously mentioned, these technologies also enable users to make changes to the content created by other users.
Forum technologies and Wiki Technologies are similar and the line between them continues to fade, but Forum technologies generally do not allow community members to change content created by other community members like is allowed in Wiki technologies. Both Wiki and Forum technologies are also becoming more popular as a method for companies to extend more control over content to staff and external users of the content.
With limited resources and tight budgets, this transition of control over the content to community members can have many advantages. In addition to the potential cost savings of outsourcing the role of authors and editors to inexpensive and generally free community members, the actual users of the content are in the best position to surface relevant content and in aggregate to determine what content is the most important and deserves greatest visibility.
Community-controlled content has proven to be very effective in cases where no one directly or indirectly is held accountable for how accurate the content is or how well it is written. No one thinks lesser of the owners of these community-controlled content sites for bad articles, and the only matter that these companies are truly held accountable for is to take steps to control content that a material number of community members would find offensive.
Conversely, other content on the Internet is directly attributable to an organization, and readers of the content should and do hold the content owners accountable for their content. As an example, content about a product or service that is used by content users to make decisions clearly must be accurate and understandable. Even content that only voice an opinion should be a clear reflection of an organization's brand and may impact consumer perceptions of the organization owning the content. Content of this nature, with these accountabilities and significant implications to an organization, typically must go through editorial controls enforced by people authorized by an organization for being a representative of said content. Unlike community-controlled (CC) content, editorially-controlled (EC) content must be subject to varying degrees of editorial controls that are commensurate with exposure associated with said content before being made available for consumption by the community of people using the content.
Currently, technology does not exist that enforces the necessary editorial controls while facilitating and motivating members of the community to interact with each other and relevant authorized content editors to continually evolve and improve EC content. Without community participation to continually and actively evolve EC content, the vast majority of content does not remain effective or relevant over time to the people using the content. Common problems with content not subject to active community involvement for evolving the content include, without limitation, the content becoming outdated, not containing all relevant considerations for the user of the content, not including content important to the people using the content, and having errors in format, grammar, and content accuracy.
Other existing technologies do nothing to facilitate and motivate community evolvement toward the evolution and improvement of EC content. Existing technologies often facilitate community conversation, and community members can award points to people for the value of their insights shared. However, no existing technology enables community members to work with content editors to improve and add to EC content.
A known solution to maintain the quality and accuracy of content is commonly referred to as knowledge bases. Knowledge bases are a part of knowledge management technology, which generally provides editorial controls over the content. However knowledge bases do nothing to facilitate open collaboration among community members using and editing the content to improve the EC content, and knowledge bases do not motivate people using the content to participate in improving the EC content.
Another current solution is described as an Internet system assisting and motivating a population of users interested in information about certain categories of subjects to automatically maintain the database content and to improve the usefulness and quality of the database information without any substantial management by the website owner-manager. However, this solution does not help pre-defined editors responsible for maintaining EC content. The present solution awards contribution points. However, the solution does not facilitate editors and other community members in awarding contribution points within pre-defined ranges commensurate with the value of the contribution in improving the EC content as perceived by the content editors and other community members using the content.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for improved techniques for extending the metrics and supporting management tools to motivate, facilitate and identify communities of people, both internal and external to an organization, to participate in directly improving and creating content that by its very nature and usage requires editorial controls beyond what can be provided by the community of people using the content itself.
Unless otherwise indicated illustrations in the figures are not necessarily drawn to scale.